A blog commenting on various aspects of the private collecting and trade in archaeological artefacts today and their effect on the archaeological record.

Sunday, 10 January 2016

Nazi Battlefield Digger-upper: "Yer all liars"

"We do, as a whole add a lot to the archaeological record, statistically, that cannot be denied" Kris Rodgers 20th January in a field.

Kris Rodgers (Addictedtobleeps) from the "Battlefield Recovery" film seems not really to understand what is being said about what the film broadcast on national TV shows. In his video 'I love Metal Detecting: Metal detecting UK #87' he complains about how the weather's been bad, he's been ill and "also I've been bullied by bigots and liars online, ah that's bin terrible as well, that's bin super fun. Cer'in people in a cer'in community that've been absolutely lying about things". The "point" he is getting at is that metal detecting is legal in England. Yes, Mr Rodgers, it is and you don't need a permit. But in Latvia and Poland you do. Can you show us yours please for the digging the four of you were filmed doing there? can you?

Mr Rodgers says he's applying (sic) his rights to "add to history".
But the point was that what Andy Brockman and others have been saying is
what we see of the practices of Mr Rodgers and his fellows in a hole in Latvia, he is destroying history, not adding to it.
I think this is the issue here, people like Mr Estuary English Tekkie
do not really catch the meaning of any text of more than eight sentences
explaining an issue such as context. They simply do not get it. So, how
can we expect them to do something they are incapable of comprehending?
We wonder why it is that they rip archaeological and historical finds
out of their context and then look blankly when we say "but why did
you do that when we've spent millions of pounds on PAS outreach for two
decades to get you to treat the historical record another way?" The
truth seems to be that they simply lack the cognitive apparatus to
understand what the issue is. Here we see Mr Rodgers resorting to the
victimised by a conspiracy model ("they don't like you if yer a metal detectorist like myself").
It is obviously inconceivable to him that what we see in the film
broadcast on national TV the night before we do in fact see an utter
shambles and a series of terrible mistakes. No, he sees himself as the
"victim" of "bullying" and "lies".

The metal detectorist filmed in action does not see the irony in his claim that "we [detectorists] in may instances will [sniff] find archaeological spots [sic] which the good archaeologists can then go into and then do some investigation". Not when you and your mates have emptied it blind with a JCB they
cannot. Mr Rodgers apparently sees no disconnect here. As for the claim
at the top of this post, it seems to have escaped his notice that even
the PAS is saying the bulk of the material hoiked by metal detecting
artefact hunters and collectors goes unrecorded, so adds nothing at all
to the archaeolopgical record. In the rest of the film he runs around
like an excited puppy dog barking at anything he finds, whether he
recognizes what it is or not.

Edited You Tube screenshots for the purpose of satire, as well as criticism and review

At the end is a segment where he gets as he puts it "preachy", makes an appeal for artefact collectors to record their finds and also to support their local archaeologists:

"and when I say archaeologists, I mean the people wot actually go out an' do sum werk, rather than sit behind there computers very very bored, unemployed wiv nuffin be''er t' do than troy t' ruin uvver people's lives. Support the peeple wot sincerely support saving history"

Another accusation, his critics are not only bigots and 'absolute liars, they are also idle and unemployed. From what we see of his action in the field, Mr Rodgers probably would not know an archaeologist if he stepped on one in the dark.

Yes. Mr Rodgers support the people that support the kind of metal detecting use that represents true best practice. Any truly responsible detectorist will, I hope join us in condemning what quite clearly is by no stretch of the imagination any kind of 'best practice' - like what we see happening on film in "Nazi War Diggers" and "Battlefield Recovery". That's not "lies" Mr Rodgers, it's all there on film.

Show us your Latvian and Polish permits instead of complaining.

UPDATE 10th Jan 2016
Look at the comments underneath, here's a particularly moronic one from "idetect:

When "Idetect" learns to read and write, he might be able to understand that "not trespassing, doing nothing illegal, reporting finds to PAS" are not the only issues of importance. That's the beginning only. If Mr Rodgers is referring to the criticism of "Battlefield Recovery" the issue is not that people like Andy Brockman are "jealous" of the finds, but that what he is filmed doing is damaging to the archaeological record, and far from "saving history" the film shows its avoidable destruction, and practices which are dangerous if imitated. Even though a concept as seemingly simple as that may seem to most of us relatively easy to understand, it seems that there are folk out there who have a major struggle in following it. Why that is, I could not say.

In his excellent Pipeline roundup, Andy Brockman - presumably, given his stance on Battlefield Recovery, one of those accused by Rodgers above as a "bigot and a liar" - specifically notes the fact that both the production company and the broadcaster are remaining silent pending an Ofcom investigation but:

Co-presenter of “Battlefield Recovery” [Nazi War Diggers]
Kris Rodgers has become the first member of the team to make a public
comment on the controversy. Up until now the members of the team have
remained steadfastly quiet, probably as the result of industry standard
contractual gagging clauses preventing any public comment which has not
been authorised by the producer/broadcaster.

1 comment:

About Me

British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.

Abbreviations used in this blog

"coiney" - a term I use for private collector of dug up ancient coins, particularly a member of the Moneta-L forum or the ACCG

"heap-of-artefacts-on-a-table-collecting" the term rather speaks for itself, an accumulation of loose artefacts with no attempt to link each item with documented origins. Most often used to refer to metal detectorists (ice-cream tubs-full) and ancient coin collectors (Roman coins sold in aggregated bulk lots)